The Fairfield/ Knights Park Conservation Area could be at the heart of a legal challenge of Kingston Council's decision to approve a new leisure centre

In approving the plans for a new leisure centre, the Council had to conduct a balancing act and - through that act - show that the public benefits that the scheme will bring outweigh ANY harm that the scheme will have on the significance of any designated heritage assets

However, nowhere in the report did officers even describe any assessment of the existing “significance” of the designated heritage asset that is The Conservation Area. They rather repeatedly asserted that the proposal will improve and enhance the significance, the current degree or nature of which they had not established.

In regards to the Fairfield/ Knights Park Conservation Area, officers concluded that the harm that will be caused to the Conservation Area by the proposed development is “proportionate to the significance of the relevant heritage asset” and that the proposal will have a “neutral impact on the special interest of the Conservation Area”. But they provided no evidence or justification for these assertions.

Indeed, they completely overlooked - in drawing these conclusions - the detailed desciption in the Conservation Area Designation Document 1984 ("The CADD 1984") of the particular features of The Conservation Area that justified its designation and protection.

The Heritage, Townscape and Visual Impact Assessment (The “HTVIA”) on which officers based their own conclusions explicitly stated that it based its assessment on a few sentences from Kingston Council’s website and their own brief assessment of the Conservation Area, which is limited to five bullet points

No reference is even made to any assessment of the impact of the proposed development on The Conservation Area by Historic England, a statutory consultee whose silence on this massive development is quite extraordinary. Historic England is not even mentioned in the officers' report in relation to the Heritage Balance

You can read what were identified as the defining features of The Conservation Area in The CADD 1984 that were worthy of protection here: https://www.shahscott.com/post/two-fingers-to-kingston-conservation-area

The CADD 1984 states that the current Kingfisher Leisure Centre “complements” the Library and Museum at the north-west corner of the proposed Conservation Area – a material factor in the designation of The Conservation Area
  
In contrast, no justification is given by officers to Members for their agreement with the statement made in the HTVIA that:

“The former leisure centre building detracts from the character and appearance of the conservation area due to its fairly plain form and inward-looking design which does not match the civic refinement of the other public buildings within the conservation area and singles it out as a conspicuously modern building which does not respond to the character and appearance of the conservation area.”

Please donate and encourage everyone you know to donate to the fundraiser whatever they can afford so we can find out if there are sufficiently strong legal grounds to challenge Kingston council's decision to approve their application for this behemoth of a leisure centre. 

The Kingfisher Leisure Centre has not been demolished yet.

Many thanks as always

Caroline